Poinsettia Christmas Nails

Merry Christmas lovelies!
Obviously it's after Christmas, but it's really hard to get to a computer as I'm still visiting family. I just snapped a few quick pics of my Christmas mani!

I used Zoya Logan, Isla, Elisa, and Ziv. I mixed a little black with Isla for some lowlights, and mixed Ziv with Elisa for the berries.

The tips were inspired by this stamping plate I have (I think it's a Bundle Monster) that has little leaves and berries and reminds me of mistletoe.

Speaking of mistletoe...I found some real mistletoe at the garden center this year! There was more than enough, so I bagged some up for my mum and brought it 600 miles for her. Well my husband left it out to freeze in the car over night, and then it got squished 5 times, so now we have this:

Waa waaa waaaahhhh. It looks like Charlie Brown's Christmas mistletoe.

Here's my nail art close up.

So how did your Christmas go!?
We visited the in-laws first through Christmas Eve, then spent Christmas Day on with my family (and are still here).
Some of my favorite things that I got: huge canvas print of our wedding couple picture, a last name picture where each letter is an item that looks like that letter, gorgeous purple and multi-colored wool slippers with leaf designs on them, a Sephora gift card which I've already used once, a small tapestry with a giraffe numming some plants that was hand woven at a womens' shelter in Africa (adorable), some awesome stuff! We just got back from hiking in the Smokies today, which I haven't been able to do in ages. We're having a great time :).

I want to hear about your Christmas and see your nails!!

Zoya Lovely Press Release

Zoya has a new collection coming for Spring!

 

Here is the press release information from Zoya with color descriptions, etc:

Zoya Lovely
Beauty is a lovely state of mind

Lovely, just LOVELY!

Spring is awash in six soft and lovely new Zoya shades including three dewy metallics and three fresh blooms of cream. Poetic in nature, this collection is sure to capture the beauty of the season like no other....

ZOYA LOVELY – SPRING 2013

Piaf (ZP652) - Fresh Forsythia Yellow Metallic - Full Coverage (Originally designed for Fashion Designer Zang Toi)

GeiGei (ZP651) - Blushing Cherry Blossom Pink Metallic - Full Coverage (Originally designed for Zang Toi/SS13).

Julie (ZP650) - Soft Wisteria Purple Metallic - Full Coverage (Originally designed for Zang Toi/SS13).

Blu (ZP653) - Lucky Hyacinth Blue Cream - Full Coverage

Neely (ZP655) - Earliest Spring Green Cream - Full Coverage (Originally designed for Peter Som/SS13).

Jacqueline (ZP654) - Perfect Magnolia Nude Cream - Full Coverage (Originally designed for Peter Som/SS13)

Shipping January 01, 2013

Ultra long-wearing, nail lacquers by Zoya are BIG5FREE - all formulas are completely free of harmful industrialchemicals such as toluene, camphor, formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) that are known to cause cancer and birth defects.

Zoya Lovely $8 (US)

Follow the Zoya Nail Polish and Treatments Blog and stay tuned on Twitter (@Zoyanailpolish) and Facebook for release date updates.

Hashtags: #ZoyaLovely and #nailpolish.

My first thought is EASTER lol. It seems so done, but I don't think Zoya has done pastel colors such as this yet. I think I like Jacqueline the best, maybe Plaf and GelGel too. The others just seem unoriginal, but I always think that until I see them on my nails, so we shall see!! I do hate how they have veered away from using only female names now - GelGel. I mean I suppose there could be someone named that....but it isn't even pretty. I like the odd unique ones they do like Bevin and Neely, but I just can't see GelGel as a name. Plaf is pretty weird too. 

I really can't wait to swatch these. Just watch, I'll fall in love with them lol. 

Scapbooking Fun and Giveaway

 You know I love all things crafty! I really love scrapbooking, it's just hard for me to start and finish a project since it takes SO long. I found this scrapbooking software, My Memories, that is really fun to use though, and its easier because you don't have to sit at a big table with 23908 things out, glue, scissors, get all your pics printed, etc, etc. You can just sit at your computer, sip on your coffee without the worry of spilling it all over your paper, and do it. 

I didn't read a tutorial, help page, or anything to make these. I wanted to try it out from the perspective of a first time, without extra help and research, and see how user friendly it was. So anything I say about what it does or doesn't do is just my experience from my general use.

 I still haven't made our wedding scrapbook like I had planned to, so I thought I'd try out a wedding page! I made this with the My Memories scrapbooking suite.

This is a collage of the most important parts of our wedding ceremony with the actual wording we wrote. I made my own custom layout with this one. You can change the shape of the pictures, add shadows, embellishments, words, word art, and more. You can rotate things around and change the opacity too. 
Unfortunately you can't do much with the text boxes. I couldn't really rotate them or change the shape of them. You can make them follow a circle or square though.

Here is one of their premade templates. This one is for Christmas.

I used it to make a Christmas card!

You can see I repositioned some things, added smowflake, etc. This was fun! 

I went through lots of awesome things about the program above, so lets do some cons. 

I mentioned the text boxes aren't that versatile. Rotating is a super pain in the butt. It isn't smooth like Microsoft Word for example. You have to move the slider that makes it rotate, see where it lands, then micro-adjust it again. The entire program runs very slow like this. It isn't my computer, because I have a pretty fast computer. When choosing picture for my layout, it was faster to open the file with the pictures on my computer, memorize the number, scroll down to it in the program, and click it before the preview even uploaded.

You can make all sorts of things with this software: scrapbook pages you can put in a digital scrapbook online or have printed, photo books, cards, slideshows, invitations, stationary, or custom gifts like a mug for grandma. I love that you can export the files as a jpegs and put them on Facebook!

The My Memories scrapbooking software sells for $39.97. If you use my coupon code: STMMMS46363, you can get $10 off that price, and an additional $10 to spend in the My Memories store to buy things like different scrapbook paper, stickers, etc. 

Sound like fun? Then enter to win a free copy!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

12-12-12 Sales

This will be the only time in ANY of our lifetimes that we'll see numbers like this!

12-12-12 12:12pm

Don't miss it! You could make a major wish :).

There are some good sales going on today too!

Barielle

Their color sets are going for $20 and free shipping. That's $4 each! I recommend Dazzling Diamonds, New York Style, and Some Like it Hot!

They're also doing the buy one get one 50%, so add on your favorite lemmings!

Apothica

22% off kits, 20% off store wide
I actually put some stuff in my cart and tried it out - The kits are already discounted, so the 20% off comes off of them too!!

This deal applies on all their sites - Apothica, SkincareRX, and Skin Botanica.

Find anymore? Let me know!!

Lavish Lacquer Polished Universe Collection

 A really good friend of mine started her own nail polish line! It's so awesome to see someone's dream come true like this! If you want it, you can make it happen ladies!
Meet Lavish Lacquer!

 This is her Polished Universe collection! I thought this was a fun idea for a collection. It's nice to see an indie do something other than all chunky glitters. I totally forgot to topcoat any of these though - sorry!

Starlight Galaxy is a charcoal polish that's holo in three different ways! It has a light linear holo, holo glitter, and scattered holo. I think the linear holo would be stronger, but the other stuff in it cuts up the lines of rainbows. It's super fun that it's all three though!


This was two coats, and was honestly one of my favorites!

Along the Milky Way is a super glittery purple polish with small purpley pink hexes, holo shimmer, and shimmer that flashes silver, gold, yellow green, and even blue in dimmer light!

This is two coats. I love the way the pink hexes stand out, and you can really see the blue flash here! That makes it really unique!


Alien Party makes me giggle lol! It's a sheer super bright neon green polish with lime green shimmer. This is two coats over white, Barielle Central Park, black, and China Glaze Gaga for Green.

It almost hurts my eyes over white, so I deem it a neon. Seriously my camera even had trouble with it! I like how this can be a versatile polish! The shimmer is really nice. I should have tried it over something totally different like purple! It is very sheer and looks like shimmery highlighter without undies :P.


Holo lovers delight! Neptune's Rings is an electric blue scattered holo polish.

This is two coats and it went on great!

Life on Mars is a hot pink leaning a bit more red with pink and gold shimmer.

This is a smooth one! All of her polishes were very smooth except the two more glittery ones, which I'm sure would only need a standard top coat even though I forgot one!

I like her polishes! I have to say I especially like the glittery ones, but Alien Party is one of my favs too. I love how it changes depending on what you layer it over. I absolutely adore her labels! I love anything naturey and viney.
She also has a super awesome cosmetic grade linear holo top coat and pigment, and an awesome new purple/blue glass fleck polish I really want!!

Check out Lavish Lacquers Etsy shop and Facebook page!
Her polishes are $8.50 for a regular size and $5.50 for a mini. 

Lacquer Lust Miss Fortune

 I discovered another awesome indie brand lately: Lacquer Lust! She has some truly gorgeous polishes. This is honestly now one of my favorite polishes.
Lacquer Lust Miss Fortune is a lovely peachy pink scattered holo. This was two coats and the formula was great.

I swear this polish is as close to a duochrome as it can get without actually being one. I still can't decide. Sometimes I kind of see a flash of gold and fuschia! It isn't very strong, but it makes it that much more awesome!

 Check out Lacquer Lust's polish shop here, and her Facebook page!
Her polishes sell for $7.50 each, which is think is really reasonable for an indie!

This product was sent to me for my unbiased review.

Oh Christmas Moose, Oh Christmas Moose!

Please vote for me in the contest by clicking on this link and choosing my name on the ballot!! I'm #11!!

Another nail art contest! This week the theme is "trim the tree (holiday decorations)"! It just so happens I put up my tree only a few days ago! I decided to paint some of my favorite ornaments on my nails!

 I used KB Shimmer All Decked Out as a base. I did six ornaments, with Christmas lights on the rest of the nails. I used so many different polishes and mixes of polishes that I'm not even going to bother to list them unless you're curious about a particular one.

 I actually made this fish from clay in high school. I still love it so much!!

 I love this little walnut and pompom turtle haha! Isn't he adorable!?

 Here is a collage of each nail art I did.

 Here are my very favorite ornaments on my tree that I used as inspiration. I love birds, so the tiny cardinal is just too cute...an intricate glitter snowflake, turtle doves, the santa fish I made, a super fat penguin that was our ornament last year (we always pick one out every year but haven't gotten around to it for this year yet), and the random little walnut turtle lol!!

 Moose is LOVING the Christmas tree! He plays with it and sits under it all the time. <3
Jeremy was singing "Oh Christmas Moose, oh Christmas Moose!" lol!!

 We had to don our jingly bell matching antlers while we decorated the tree :D

What are your favorite ornaments on your tree?

Please vote for me in the nail art contest!!

Family Nail Diaries 1: A Lesson in Cleanup

I do nails with my family all the time - my sister, mum, MIL, even my husband! I thought it would be fun to start a feature for all of my family posts like this: Family Nail Diaries :D. I'll be posting new and old posts about my family and nails and the like!

Let's kick off with a recent one! This is me and my sister on Thanksgiving. I taught her how to do cleanup on her nails with polish remover and a brush. I made a fun little collage/comic with us cleaning up lol!

 Lol she's going to kill me for these pics, but I think they rock!

 I finally convinced her to try something other than subtle pink/nude/grey polish! This is two coats of Barielle Erica's Pencil Skirt with nail art in China Glaze I Herd That. She never wears glitter either, so this was a huge deal!

 She wore it for days, even over to her in-laws house. I'm so proud of her for branching out :D. She's much more into nail fashion lately and even keeps up with my blog! She told me she wanted me to bring an "oxblood" color when I came down for Thanksgiving, so I picked this one.




Here she is cleaning up with my brush. Now she wants one for Christmas! What have I started!?!?

It's great that my family enjoys nail stuff too! I love my sister's nails, don't you?!

Sea Lore Wintry Friends Collection!

Today I have swatches of the new Sea Lore Wintry Friends collection for you! I love how it was all inspired by arctic animals!
 

Arctic Otter is a medium brown polish packed with bronzey gold shimmer and bronze glitter in squares and small rectangles, small silver hexes, and medium brown hexes.

This was two coats and topcoat and the formula was great.


See the rectangular one? I love unique glitters like these!

Snowy Seal is a metallic greyed silver polish with large hexes in silver and black, small hexes in black and white, and very fine multi-colored shimmer.


This is two coats with topcoat. The formula was great, but it's a top coat muncher.

  It really does look like a spotted baby seal!!

Glacial Grayling is a dark grey blue polish filled with rainbow microglitter and shimmer and medium squares in all sorts of colors!

This is two coats. Great formula, but a top coat muncher. 

I lluuurrvvee the squares! This is my favorite polish in the collection.

 Wintry Whale is a blue jelly polish with blue/purple/silver shimmer, medium white squares, small white rectangles, and small pale blue hexes.

This is two coats. I love the jellyness of it. It's only a bit of a topcoat muncher.

Love all the different glitter shapes!!

Beluga Blizzard is a topcoat with multi-colored shimmer, small white hexes, and tiny white hexes.

This is one coat of Beluga Blizzard over China Glaze Adventure Red-y. It gives such a Christmas flair and a frosty finish with that shimmer!

Here is Beluga Blizzard with two coats by itself, one coat over Wintry Whale, over Glacial Grayling, and over China Glaze Adventure-Redy.

Love her polishes? Check out Sea Lore's Facebook and browse her shop!
Her full size polishes are $10 and her larger minis are $5.50. I also lloovvee her polish rings, and she makes earrings now too!

These products have been provided to me for my unbiased review.